George Eliot, author of ‘Adam Bede’, ‘The Mill on the
Floss’, ‘Silas Marner’, ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Daniel Deronda’, achieved mass
popularity (Queen Victoria was among her readership), and was acclaimed by her
literary contemporaries, including Tolstoy and Henry James.

In contrast, Marian Evans flouted Victorian conventions by
living with a man she was unable to marry, and by ceasing to attend church. She
was refused entry to Victorian society, she was virtually banished by her
family, and she never again saw the countryside of her youth.

This program tells the story of Marian Evans, from her pious
Midland childhood, through her development into an independent minded academic,
before emerging as the novelist George Eliot. She transformed the novel from a
form of entertainment, to a social critique incorporating serious moral
judgements and faithful representations of commonplace things.